‘It's a public,I reckon’: Publicness and a Suburban Shopping Mall in Sydney's Southwest

Traditionally, public space has been perceived as an integral part of fully functioning liberal democracy. Yet much research argues that public space is in decline due to regimes of neoliberal governance paralleled with a growth in quasi-public spaces such as shopping malls, casinos and gated communities. It is argued that these new spatial forms posit a commercialised, sanitised and ultimately exclusionary urban form in place of more egalitarian, engaging and ultimately democratic public spaces. Increasingly, however, urban research has questioned the veracity of the claims made about the nature of traditional public space as well as investigating the marginal and contingent nature of publicness as constituted by and enacted in a variety of places. Drawing on Foucault's concept of heterotopic space, this paper reports on a qualitative study based on focus group interviews conducted with users of a suburban shopping mall in Sydney's southwest. The research uncovers both a more complex and less overtly deterministic publicness than has previously been identified in such spaces. From these findings the paper argues for a conception of publicity which moves beyond the zero-sum game approach endemic in much work in this area to one which analyses the qualitative effect quasi-public spaces are having on the nature of publicness in the Australian context. The paper concludes by arguing that a rethinking of publicness allows room for the emergence of a more progressive public ethic.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
M. Steiner (ed.), Clusters and Regional Specialisation. On Geography,Technology, and Networks
Denis J.B. Shaw, Russia in the Modern World. A New Geography
Ron Martin, Money and the Space Economy     

BEYOND THE GPN–NEW REGIONALISM DIVIDE IN CHINA: RESTRUCTURING THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY,REMAKING THE WENZHOU MODEL

This article attempts to advance the research on industrial districts and regional development through a study of the restructuring of the clothing industry in Wenzhou Municipality, a regional driver of the Chinese economy. Wenzhou is known for the Wenzhou model of development traditionally centred on family‐owned small businesses embedded in local institutions. The clothing industry is one of the leading industries in Wenzhou, and a cluster with national significance has emerged, where most of the production components can be purchased locally. However, the industry has been scaled up nationally and internationally, with the expansion of sales networks and production facilities across China, and to a lesser extent, abroad. This restructuring has changed the endogenous nature of industrial clusters/districts. The restructuring challenges the orthodox notion of the Wenzhou model and the New Regionalism literature, particularly the orthodox notion of Marshallian industrial districts that overly emphasizes small firms and local assets, and the global production network perspective that highlights coupling with global lead firms in regional development.     

Bureaucrats and managers,peasants and pastoralists,imperialists and traders: Research on the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods in Mesopotamia

In recent decades the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods of the fourth millennium B. C. in Mesopotamia have been the subject of considerable research by scholars of the ancient Near East. Interests in and interpretations of these periods have focused on their credentials as early states, urban societies, and the immediate antecedents of Sumerian civilization. In this overview, I first present a brief historical background on the study of these periods, followed by a critical review of recent approaches that have had significant impacts on current directions of research and understanding of the fourth millennium. Finally, I suggest some research avenues currently being tentatively explored that may be especially appropriate for developing further our understandings of these periods.     

Being genealogical in digital geographies

In this intervention, I trace the genealogies of the recent heralding of digital geographies as a boundary object for scholarship and scholars foregrounding the digital in geography. Building off of previous efforts to be technopositional in digital geographies, I make an entreaty for further being genealogical by attuning to the insider/outsider positionalities that have informed this particular endeavour of intellectual community‐making in Anglo‐American geography. While genealogy is not an exercise in historical narration, it works against dehistorical narratives of digital technologies and of the disciplinary frameworks within which they are engaged, destabilizes technopositional privileges, and has the potential to engender more inclusive digital geography futures.     

As Basket and Papu: Making Manus Social Fabric

Between 2012 and 2019, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, hosted Australia's offshore detention centre for asylum seekers and refugees, known as the Regional Processing Centre (RPC). This paper analyses some of the social impacts of the RPC on Lorengau town, the urban centre of Manus, through the analytical lens of the Manus idiom, as basket (Tok Pisin). Materially this refers to the everyday Manus basket whilst metaphorically, it refers to an individual's or community's social, cultural, political and economic base. First, I examine asylum seekers and refugees as a social category that emerged during this period when they were referred to as papu by locals. Papu is an honorific kinship term for grandfather or elder man; for men who are symbols for family identity, social belonging, and rights to land. Second, I examine the changing materiality of Lorengau's markets as indicative of wider societal transformations and dissonance brought about by the RPC. My ethnographic data are based on long term involvement in Manus, including three recent visits to Lorengau in 2017, 2018, and 2019 where I studied the social impacts and the changing social practices of Manus people in response to the RPC.     

What exactly do REDD+ projects produce? A materialist analysis of carbon offset production from a REDD+ project in Cambodia

This article attempts to re-ground analyses of carbon markets by examining the material relations of production of a REDD + project in Cambodia. It focuses on how surplus value is extracted from labour at various points in the production chain of Verified Carbon Units (VCUs). Using extensive field work conducted over three years on a REDD + project in northern Cambodia I argue that VCUs are neither actual avoided units of deforestation and emissions, nor mere imagined or socially constructed commodities. Rather VCUs are packages of technical and affective claims attached to particular REDD + projects which are created through material labour processes. Only by examining the use-values that are created through these labour processes can demand for VCUs be properly understood. This article will start by giving a background to the Oddar Meanchey REDD + project (OMREDD + project). It will then examine the writing of the project document and examine the verification process and consider how these formed critical parts of the commodity production process. After that it will examine how the project collapsed on the ground and yet VCUs were still sold in the market. Finally the article will consider how the claims of the OMREDD + project were challenged by critical work and how future interventions against REDD + projects can successfully undermine the claims of REDD + projects and the extraction of surplus value.     

山东省泰安市农业空间生产资本化特征及模式研究

农业生产空间是农村基本功能的载体。从资本“三重循环”视角出发,将“空间的生产”理论引入农业研究,提出并构建农业空间生产资本化的作用逻辑及其特征表征,并以山东省泰安市村庄为研究单元,研究其农业空间生产资本化特征、模式表征及空间规律。发现,泰安市农业生产具有资本投入集约化、空间生产集中化、组织分工专业化等特征;农业空间生产资本化模式共有四种,在空间上呈现出以中心城区为圆心,圈层式向外拓展的规律性,农业空间生产资本化度和三重特征都表现出由内向外先增后缓降的格局。在乡村振兴背景下,识别村庄农业发展模式,根据要素条件,分类指导农业种植结构调整,有利于促进农村多功能有机融合,实现乡村农业产业兴旺发展目标。     

季节时空交互视角下老年人公交移动性的影响因素研究——以芜湖市为例

公共交通是我国老年人出行的主要交通方式之一,公交移动性是衡量老年人生活质量和幸福感的重要指标。从季节和空间双重维度分析老年人公交移动性的影响因素有助于深入理解老年人出行行为机制。利用公交刷卡数据和地理探测器方法分析了季节时空因子对老年人公交移动性的影响。研究发现：①不同季节中空间因子对老年人移动频率、移动半径和移动熵的解释力和显著性存在明显差异,对老年人移动性影响机制的分析应考虑时空变化的双重影响;②不同空间因子之间以及季节与空间因子之间的交互作用可以显著增强对老年人移动性空间分异的解释力,考虑多个因素的协同效应对深入理解老年人行为有一定帮助。研究试图拓宽老年人移动性影响因素的分析思路,为老年宜居城市建设和城市移动性规划提供重要支撑。